"A High-toned Christian Gentleman"

 

Item: I give and bequeath to my nephew Wm E. Ijams Son of [J]. H. Ijams one riding horse, bridle and saddle if living...

 

While William Edwin Ijams was not the first of his siblings mentioned in his uncle Isaac Ijams' will, he was the oldest, thus first, at least, in our review of the family. By the time his uncle Isaac drew up his will—signed by Isaac on 12 September 1845—William would have been not quite fifteen years of age.

I like to think that perhaps that gesture of kindness from an uncle contributed to the life story which unfolded for this nephew. It certainly echoed in the story of William's younger brother, as we'll see in a few days.

Born December 16, 1830, to Isaac's brother Joseph and his wife—likely an Ijams cousin—Mary Ann, William spent his early years in the same county in Ohio where his father and uncles had settled after leaving their home in Maryland. Before the time of the 1850 census, though, Joseph and his family had moved to Morgan County—a matter of only two counties to the east of Fairfield County, but enough of a distance, perhaps, for Isaac to be unsure whether his younger brother's son was still living.

From the Joseph Ijams family's residence in McConnelsville, at some point William entered school across the state border at a Pennsylvania institution which eventually became known as Washington and Jefferson College. From a biographical sketch published on the occasion of his graduating class' quarter-century reunion in 1877, we learn that William was considered "a high toned Christian gentleman...quiet and unobtrusive, yet sociable and genial" as well as "an excellent student." He had apparently entered the class in his junior year.

By the time of the 1860 census, William had married—to Elizabeth Culbertson in 1856—and relocated to Iowa City, along with his parents and younger brother, also named Joseph. There, William was listed as a teacher.

That detail, however, tells only part of the story, for William was in Iowa by at least 1854. During that earlier year, William had opened a private school in Iowa City for deaf students. Looking closely at the 1860 census, you can spot on the far right column the coding "D+D" for the two students lodging in the Ijams home, indicating they were deaf.

During that year of 1854, William presented his students at an Iowa Hall of Representatives assembly and, along with the politically active deaf advocate Edmund Booth, lobbied the state to establish a school for the deaf. Early the next year, the state established what is now known as the Iowa School for the Deaf, and William served as the school's superintendent for nine years.

Following that service, William turned his attention to the studies of theology, and was ordained a minister in 1865. He served as pastor at several locations, first in Presbyterian congregations, eventually accepting positions in Congregational churches. Though his ministry led him as far as California, he returned to serve in a congregation in Iowa City by 1879.

Even though William died childless in 1893, it is quite certain he bestowed a legacy through his service, as we'll see when we continue with the story of his younger siblings, particularly with the history of his brother Joseph next week.

Remnants of an Ancestral Story

Luther C. Fischer arrived in 1871 as the firstborn child of widow Sarah Rainey Smith and her second husband, Hartford C. Fischer. Growing up on his father's farm in Coweta County, Georgia, along with his younger sister and two brothers plus his three older half-sisters, one might not imagine Luther's family situation to be one to bestow upon him a fortunate future—especially considering his father's subsequent divorce. And yet, somehow, he found a way toward a better life.

In Georgia about that time arose a new business concern which developed a syrup, or concentrate, which could be sold to drugstore soda fountains to produce a "temperance drink." Somehow, Luther got wind of that business opportunity and began selling the concentrate across the state. He had a motivation for his industriousness: a need to finance his own education.

Even for the times, his education must have cost a sizeable amount. Luther Fischer had enrolled in the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons—eventually known as Emory University School of Medicine—and graduated in 1899. Leaving there—and the part time occupation of selling Coca Cola syrup which financed his education—Luther traveled to Europe to continue with post-graduate studies.

Upon his return to Atlanta, the new Dr. Fischer teamed up with a former professor, Dr. Edward Campbell Davis, to open the Davis-Fischer Sanatorium by 1908, which quickly outgrew its capacity. Inspired by the tragic news of the preventable loss of lives in fires destroying hospitals in Michigan and Montreal, Luther made the decision to change architectural plans for a new sanatorium from the typical wood construction to a building completely constructed of fireproof material. That eighty-five bed facility, though costly, opened its doors in 1911.

By 1931, Luther's business partner Dr. Davis had died, and according to the two men's plans, Dr. Fischer rechartered the sanatorium as a nonprofit institution and renamed it in honor of the (somewhat disputed) originator of the anesthetic use of sulfuric ether, Dr. Crawford W. Long. That institution, in subsequent years, saw its name evolve from the Crawford W. Long Memorial Hospital to the Emory Crawford Long Hospital to, simply, Emory University Hospital Midtown.

What's in a name? Sometimes, we can't really tell, until we learn its history. We learn from history, too, what went into our own genetic makeup, as we discover the personal stories of those whose lives shared the specks of DNA we also find in our own chromosomes. If not for piecing together stories like Luther Fischer's from the scraps of resources cobbled together through a Google search, perhaps not even this might have been discovered.

This, however, was not the story which led me to look closer at Luther Fischer's life. After all, the only time I've been to the state of Georgia has been to fly through its largest airport; I certainly have not had any opportunity to delve into family research there in person. It was only thanks to the kind remembrance shared on a memorial that I learned of another aspect of Luther Fischer's life.

You see, during the rise of his career, Luther also was party to another partnership: that of his marriage to Lucy Jane Hurt in 1900, daughter of Dr. C. D. and Mamie Grant Hurt. Lucy must have meant an awful lot to Luther, though it is only in traces of what was left behind—yet only briefly—that we can see any signs of their care for each other. Thankfully, in preserving that story, others have enabled it to be passed along so we, too, can know it.

I'll share what I've found about Luther and Lucy tomorrow.

Above: Undated picture of the Davis-Fischer Sanatorium, Atlanta, Georgia, possibly from mid-1920s.

Not the Meanest, By No Means the Best

“If I was ever a student, it was of law.”

As Charles Edward Broyles continued reminiscing about his earlier days back at the South Carolina home of his parents, let’s take a few moments to sketch in some details. As Charles himself mentioned in his journal, he grew up in Anderson County, part of the “upstate” region of South Carolina.

Although the O. R. Broyles family lived near what is now the town of Pendleton, from the time Charles was eleven years of age until just a few years after his marriage to Lucy Johnson, his parents actually lived on a plantation which they called Ashtabula. Now known as the Ashtabula Historic House, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972, and is preserved as a museum by the Pendleton Historic Foundation. (If you are ever driving through the area, stop by, tour the place and think of me.)

As seen by the public now, the “large clapboard mansion” was not the original building on the property. The Pendleton Historic Foundation website provides a house history, detailing the property’s 1790 origin with a brick building which served as a tavern and stagecoach stop on the road from Pendleton to Pickensville and Greenville. A previous owner of the property began building the clapboard house in 1828, but died before being able to complete it. His children finished the building project, then advertised it as “the most beautiful farm in the up-country,” according to the Historic Foundation. The property was sold in 1837 to Dr. O. R. Broyles.

Ozey Broyles, described as “an agriculturalist and inventor,” devised a form of sub-surface plow and realized a good deal of success in his farming endeavors. It was reported in the Pendleton Farmers’ Society that by 1843, his land was producing a record harvest in rice.

It was in the midst of this time that Ozey’s older sons were working their way through the early years of their education. A few passages from Charles’ journal give a flavor of what those early studies were like.

My first schooling was on the Beaver Dam S. C. old field style…. From boyhood I took in a large field of fun and frolic, and while not the meanest boy in school was by no means the best. I was full of fun, and always kept the little ones crying and the girls sighing.

I procured a good English Education, prepared myself for college and the law. I was not eighteen years old having been born at Anderson Co. South Carolina on the twenty sixth day of March 1826.

Charles’ biography at this point seems somewhat confusing about the timeline of his college studies. He mentioned attending “the S. C. college,” which, at that time, was what the University of South Carolina was called. However, he mentioned its location as Pendleton, not the centrally-located campus in Columbia, where the state assembly had deliberately intended it to be.

I then went to Pendleton S. C. and entered the S. C. college. At this place I completed a course of studies and left it in the fall of 1845.

Whatever that “course of studies” at this other location might have been, his narrative later mentions Columbia—though whether that is meant to indicate more schooling at the college, or possibly an oblique way to indicate he was admitted to the bar at the state’s capital, I can’t tell.

At the end of two more studies I was admitted at Columbia S.C. and my professional rostrum was higher that day to look from than it has ever been since.

Yet, in the midst of those earnest studies, he encountered an unexpected personal difficulty, the telling of which somewhat confuses me as to the timeline of his academic progress. No matter what the order, though, you can sense the intense regard he had for the focus of his studies, despite his physical set-backs.

I was cut off one year by sickness. A spell of Typhoid fever that so crippled my limbs that I did not walk for years and I [feel] the effects to this day. I left College in 1845 and in 1846 commenced the study of Blackston [renowned British jurist, Sir William Blackstone]. With this abstruse work the greatest of all books, I wrestled for two years diligently. Only to find out by this that it would be laid on the shelf as a spark would be seen from the mighty volume of the day’s Luminary. So many books have been written on the law, that I even I would not attempt...but rather incline to the opinion that if hundreds were destroyed and the old laws left in force and the rulings of good sense made our guide the world would be better off than we are [now]. Suffice it to say. The heart leaped with joy as I gazed  upon the beauties of legal planes wealth and character that stood before me. I entered the study with more than ordinary zeal. The fact is if I was ever a student it was of law.

Above: undated black and white photograph of the south front and west side of Ashtabula near Pendleton in Anderson County, South Carolina, once the property of the O. R. Broyles family from 1837 through 1851; courtesy the United States Library of Congress; in the public domain. A more recent color photograph, presenting the other side of the main building, may be viewed here.

The Road to Ireland

Though the date for the much-anticipated trip to Ireland will soon be upon us, the way leading up to that point still seems to be long and winding.

The plan is for my daughter, now a junior in college—at the only undergraduate School of International Studies on the west coast—to spend her upcoming fall semester studying abroad in Ireland. Her hoped-for study-abroad university assignment is University College Cork.

For anyone who has followed A Family Tapestry for any length of time, Cork is the city that is conveniently located just down the road from some of my husband’s Irish forebears. How could we not take advantage of such serendipitous situation?!

Yet, as much as I intended to stay on task and dutifully complete all the prerequisite research in preparation for arrival in our target cities, there have been many roadblocks to its completion. Admittedly, some of them were unavoidable—like serious injury and even death in the family—but nonetheless, it appears I’ve got to quickly get back to the business of preliminary research in order to be sufficiently prepared for the task ahead of us.

Yes, it was informative and entertaining, even, to take the detours in the past few months that led me to the Ukraine on behalf of my godmother’s Melnitchenko family, and to the old south of my mother’s maternal ancestors, but for the most part, the road ahead will be filled with all the details I can find on the Irish heritage claimed by my husband and his family.

Step one will be to review what I’ve already written on each branch of that family. So far, I’ve blogged about the Tully family and their roots in Ballina, County Tipperary. I’ve made some mention of the Malloy family—especially the mysterious Stephen Malloy whose disappearance to Boston led to the family’s ultimate immigration to Chicago—and the related Flanagan family of County Limerick (they who were just up the road from Cork). I’ve bemoaned my research fate in having to find the Kelly family from County Kerry, and even my discovery that the Falvey family from that county had a more common surname than I at first had suspected.

Following that, step two will be to see where the trail ends for each of the Irish family names I’m tracing—where, exactly, I’m stuck in retracing the family’s steps from the New World back to their ancestral home in Ireland.

Step three, of course, will be to work feverishly to connect the dots from where the trail goes dark in Chicago or New Orleans or even Ontario to where it began in the old country.

My hope is that this several-months’ hiatus from researching the Irish story will have not only provided a respite for the researcher (and, by proxy, the researcher’s followers) but a period of renewal for all those much-appreciated online services which are, daily, adding to their collections of digitized records.

Above: photograph of the Long Hall and Clock Tower of University College Cork by Bjorn Christian Torrissen via Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

In the Cavalry: Getting Down to Details

Perhaps every mother needs to face up to the fact that her son entertains dreams of glory which may find their way out into reality when he enlists in the army. I don’t know how young men’s dreams took shape in the 1800s, but as soon as he could after the 1861 start of hostilities, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles grabbed his chance to turn his own dreams into reality. On September 5, 1863—supposedly as soon as he could after school graduation—T. T. Broyles enlisted at McPhersonville, South Carolina. Lieutenant L. J. Walker did the honors, enrolling him as a private in Company A of the Rutledge Mounted Riflemen and Horse Artillery.

At some point, Company A combined with Company B, Seventh Regiment of the South Carolina Cavalry, as noted on Thomas Broyles’ service records:

            The 7^th Regiment South Carolina Cavalry was formed by the addition of five independent companies to the five companies of the Cavalry Battalion, Holcombe Legion, South Carolina Volunteers, by S. O. No. 65, A. & I. G. O., dated March 18, 1864.

Shortly after that date, on May 27, 1864, newly-promoted Colonel Alexander Cheves Haskell assumed the responsibilities of the Seventh South Carolina Cavalry—a position which he held through the remainder of the war. Haskell’s appointment there replaced the command of Wade Hampton III, ironically later becoming the South Carolina Governor who subsequently saw to it that Haskell received a position as justice on the state supreme court. With his many significant roles in South Carolina military and political history, as well as commerce and transportation, a sizeable collection of Haskell's papers have been preserved and housed at the University of South Carolina library.

While notes concerning the Haskell Papers provide an overview of conditions of war under his command—and thus a bird’s eye view of what my great-great-grandfather may have also been experiencing in part—they, combined with sections of Thomas Broyles’ obituary, serve to introduce some doubt in my mind as to the reliability of the statements contained in that memorial.

I noticed, for instance, the report in the introduction to the Haskell collection:

            Haskell graduated from South Carolina College on the eve of the Civil War, second in his class, and immediately volunteered in the First Regiment…

Tell me, where have I heard such a line before? Could it be that statements like that in Thomas’ report are a popular romanticization of the time period?

            Thomas Broyles graduated from the University of North Carolina at eighteen years of age, and three days later was in the saddle as a member of Heiskell's Cavalry.

The parallel is too uncomfortable for me. Was it just fashionable to say one was so committed to this war that he could hardly await the chance to serve?—well, after graduation from college first, of course.

Then to some of the other facts: why, for instance, would a publication such as the Confederate Veteran misspell Haskell’s name? Editorial sloppiness? Disinterest in proper spelling? A dreadfully caricatured southern drawl? Or was there really another cavalry leader with the surname Heiskell, who just happened to carry the same two initials as Haskell? Why, then, would records—now preserved online—show company rosters detailed under the name Haskell and not Heiskell?

And then there is this little matter of math. Here, I’m hobbled in that I don’t feel entirely confident about Thomas’ birth date. But if he enlisted in the army in 1863, being eighteen years of age at that point would make his year of birth 1845. The birth date I’ve noted on my records was originally received from a footnote in volume one of Arthur Leslie Keith’s History of the Broyles Family (I've since found corollary evidence in the death certificate—though that only provides me a modicum of confidence). If the date given, October 28, 1842, is correct, an enlistment date of September 5, 1863, would put Thomas just shy of his twenty-first birthday. Not the eighteenth.

Bringing Dr. Keith’s long out-of-print manuscript into the conversation introduces another discrepancy: that same source indicates Thomas graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1860. That’s not exactly just a few days away from that September, 1863, enlistment, now is it?

Whatever the case may be—and especially adding the issue of his missing headstone to bolster my resolve—I propose a lot more study should be invested in sorting out the details of this man’s history.

And, above all, never trust an obituary. If ever there was a time to wax eloquent, it is in eulogizing a loved one recently departed. 

Above right: Kurz and Allison, Battle of Cold Harbor, from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division in Washington, D. C.; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain. Cold Harbor was one of the battles in which Thomas Taliaferro's commanding officer, Col. A. C. Haskell, was injured.  

The Hunt For More Information

Though the information regarding Thomas Taliaferro Broyles’ burial remains hidden—at least for now—his obituary contains a number of other hints for me to follow. These details, hopefully, will paint a clearer picture of the man.

Proceeding from where we last left the narrative published in the Confederate Veteran in its January 1923 issue, the very next sentence provides enough for two days’ postings:

Thomas Broyles graduated from the University of North Carolina at eighteen years of age, and three days later was in the saddle as a member of Heiskell's Cavalry.

Let’s break that sentence into two parts. I have ulterior reasons for that. First, I’ll have to mount a new learning curve in researching Civil War veterans of that other side of the conflict. I’ve already made the attempt at researching Union veterans when I was working on my husband’s Tully line, coming up with grand family legend but nothing substantiated. In addition, my first foray into searching for the referred-to “Heiskell’s Cavalry” has not proved promising. This, I assure you, will take me time.

As to that first point—regarding educational background—I also hesitate. Today, I think just about everyone knows that the state’s university system is identified by city of campus location. The first thing I thought of when reading this part of Thomas’ obituary was “University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.” But was Thomas’ campus the one at Chapel Hill? At which campus would I begin my search?

Some people might balk at the statement that Thomas graduated from college at the age of eighteen. I’m aware, however, of several historic figures from the colonial period who had attended such institutions as Yale, for instance, at now-unheard-of early ages. Perhaps even in the 1800s, that accomplishment would not be such an anomaly.

And yet, as if to hedge my bets, I thought I’d take a look to see if the University also hosted a preparatory school. While I didn’t find mention of such an arrangement on campus, in reviewing the state’s history of providing public higher education, it appears that the first campus—and the only one at the time of Thomas’ graduation—was that at Chapel Hill.

That is not all there is, as far as Thomas’ education goes. Thanks to one of the readers here—Leah, whose comment included this helpful link—I now have a clue as to where the good doctor obtained his medical credentials: the University of Nashville Medical School, now merged with the better-known Vanderbilt University.

I’m beginning to wonder whether my great-great-grandfather had an obstinate streak to him, though. When I scanned through the online resources for the med school's alumni listings of that time period, once again I’ve had to face up to that “unable to locate” conclusion. For the time being, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles’ academic credentials are as well-hidden as his headstone.

I’m beginning to wonder what else about the man will turn out to be invisible.